


falling in like at an international house of pancakes

by orphan_account



Series: thieving sons of [2]
Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: M/M, harry is also in it for approximately two seconds, it's also seriosuly ridiculous i'm not sorry, the angst snuck in i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:58:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2625965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	falling in like at an international house of pancakes

**Author's Note:**

> louis ended up being a bit manic in this one. oops.

Liam is flustered.

He usually is when he’s at the station, but Louis likes to make it worse by stealing people’s staplers and leaving them on Liam’s desk.

“You can’t just _take_ the staplers!” Liam whisper-yells as he gathers the half dozen Louis left for him while he was in the bathroom. Louis, who had been spinning in Liam’s chair for the past two minutes, plants his feet on the ground and smiles at him. At least, he thinks he smiles at Liam; there are about three of him and they’re all tilting toward the floor. Maybe spinning wasn’t such a good idea.

“I did, though,” he says.

“Well, you shouldn’t,” Liam huffs and stomps away. Louis sinks further into the chair, pressing his hands against his eyes until the world has stopped trying to turn upside down. He lets his head fall to the side as he waits for Liam to come back. They were supposed to go to dinner after his shift, but the overachiever decided to work overtime and also not tell Louis before he got there. He only has so much left on his bus pass.

Eyeing the phone, Louis smirks.

It takes four rings for Nick to pick up, and when he does, his hello is soaked in suspicion.

“Nicholas!” Louis exclaims. He hears Nick sigh.

“Louis.”

“How’s it goin’, pal?” Louis asks with over-the-top enthusiasm.

“Where the hell are you calling from?” Nick replies. It sounds like he’s typing. Maybe Louis interrupted his latest heist plan. Or maybe he’s just typing nonsense. Louis does that sometimes.

“The police station.”

The typing stops, and Nick’s end of the line goes weirdly quiet. “What?”

“I'm at the police station,” Louis repeats. He prides himself on hiding the smile from his voice. “It’s really boring here, did you know that?”

“Why are you at the police station? You didn’t get arrested, did you?” Nick asks. Demands, really. Like he would care if Louis got locked up. He holds back a scoff and starts spinning in the chair again. He stops when he gets caught up in the cord, left arm pinned to his side.

“Do you really think I would call _you_ if I got arrested? Honestly.”

“I didn’t think you would call me at all,” Nick says. “Honestly.”

Louis does scoff this time. “I had to find a new way to bug you.”

He can’t stop smiling as Nick lets out a sarcastic _ha ha ha_.

He feels giddy, more so than his usual messing-with-Nick giddiness. Obviously he is very ill and should be taken to the hospital immediately. And where is Liam to tell him to stop using police resources in these situations?

He’ll just go with it.

“So, _Nick_ , what are you wearing?” Louis says a little too loud. A cadet looks over in alarm, but Louis is trying too hard to hold back laughter to be bothered. He’s rewarded with the sound of Nick choking on air.

“ _What_?!” Nick practically yells. Louis holds the phone away from his ear, allowing a laugh.

“Calm down, will you? I'm just messing with you.”

“Well,” Nick says. “Good. I'm not having phone sex with you while you’re in a police station.”

“But there are handcuffs everywhere,” Louis says.

“I'm hanging up on you.”

“No, wait!” Louis coughs around a slightly hysterical giggle. When he doesn’t immediately hear the dial tone, he goes on. “You live near here, right?”

“Yes,” Nick says, back to suspicious.

“Do you want to get dinner?” Louis asks. Nick is silent for a minute, too long in Louis’ opinion. “Zayn gave me his credit card, and I hate eating alone, so I thought you might just wanna get a free meal. Maybe.”

“Just the two of us?” Nick asks. Louis rolls his eyes at the previously disturbed cadet.

“Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t need you at all. You can pick the place.”

“I'm guessing I'd have to pick you up.”

“Yep.”

Nick sighs for a long time. Louis spots Liam finally coming back from his great staple return.

“I can get there in half an hour,” Nick says. “And don’t expect me to look nice.”

“It’s not like it’s a date,” Louis replies. The butterfly beat of his pulse says different, but it’s not like Nick could—or should—know that.

“Obviously,” Nick says. “I'll see you soon.”

“Bye!” Louis chirps, hanging up just before Liam can start on his _this is my place of work you can’t just call people on my phone_ rant. It’s quite long, and Louis doesn’t think he could make his not-date with Nick if he lets it happen. He relinquishes the chair to Liam, who just looks at him distrustfully, and bounces on the balls of his feet for half a second before wandering over to the cadet he traumatized to entertain himself as he waits.

Nick was lying when he said he wouldn’t look nice. It’s cruel, really, that he can wear a gross sweatshirt and gross jeans and look _good_. The glasses aren’t helping Louis either. Neither is the hair, all soft-looking and wavy instead of the usual quiff.

“Rolled out of a garbage can, I see,” Louis says as he settles in the passenger seat of Nick’s car. Nick spares him a dry glance before pulling away from the curb. He drives way too fast and takes turns way too sharp. Louis loves it.

It’s not long before Nick pulls into a parking space in front of a blue and white building.

Torn between gaping and laughing, Louis lets out a snort. “Out of anywhere around here to get free food, you pick IHOP.”

“I like breakfast,” Nick says, already getting out of the car. Louis snorts again before he follows. _IHOP._

 They sit on opposite sides of a booth, and Nick orders coffee while Louis asks for chocolate milk.

“You’re a child,” Nick notes. Louis pulls the paper off the end of his straw and blows it in Nick’s face.

“You’re boring,” he replies.

“I feel like we’ve been through this.”

“That should tell you something.”

“Ha ha,” Nick says. He lifts his menu to shield his face from Louis, who huffs. Nick _is_ boring; Louis isn’t sure why he was excited to see him in the first place. Still, he’s not going to just let Nick be secluded behind laminated paper when Louis is _right there_ waiting for entertainment.

“Okay, sourpuss,” he coos. “Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?”

“You did,” Nick answers, briefly glaring at Louis over the top of the menu before it snaps back up.

“I did not!” Louis exclaims. “I just told you I did.”

“Uh huh.” Nick does not sound convinced, and it’s not like Louis _cares_ or anything, but he really was just messing around. Waking up to Nick Grimshaw in his kitchen, eating his cereal, really makes him grumpy.

“Honestly,” Louis continues, “like I would waste my urine on you, Grimshaw.”

Nick lowers the menu to the table and smiles at Louis, which is such a rare occurrence that Louis looks around for confirmation that it’s really happening and finds their waitress standing to his right with their drinks, looking very disturbed.

And normally Louis wouldn’t be embarrassed by such a thing—having little to no shame remains on his resume under Special Talents—but he feels the blood rushing to his face and drops his head on the table in front of him with a thunk. He blames it on the fact that the waitress looks a bit like his mother.

He registers Nick talking but not his actual words, and when he lifts his head, Nick is still smiling. The waitress is gone. It’s all very disturbing.

“What are you smiling about?” Louis snaps, willing his face to stop doing the whole “blushing” thing as he scowls.

“I didn’t think you’d mind so I ordered for you,” Nick says. Which is a flat-out lie, obviously Louis would mind, but he doesn’t feel like arguing it. He checks his phone instead, hoping Harry might have sent him a new picture of Ben’s ridiculously huge house. No such luck. Why is everyone so boring today?

“How many sugar packets do you think I can take before someone notices?” he asks. There aren’t that many people around, but he figures _someone_ ought to figure out what he’s doing. It’s the reactions he’s looking for today.

“Possibly all of them,” Nick muses. Louis looks at him and grins. Maybe more than just the strangers’ reactions.

“I can get more than you.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Humming, Louis taps his fingers on the table for a second before shooting out of the booth.

Despite his quick departure, his trek across the restaurant is a casual one. He even makes conversation with a couple and their kid as he slips all their sugar packets into his pockets. Opposite him, Nick takes from empty tables. _Loser_ , Louis notes, even as he does the same just to up his numbers.

In the end, neither of them get caught in the act. Louis sits at their table first and piles up the pink and white and blue packs in front of him. Nick comes back with a considerably larger pile, something Louis blames on Nick’s larger hands and therefore greater carrying capacity, but before they can tally the score (and Louis can surreptitiously slide some from Nick’s pile over to his own), their waitress returns.

She looks at the piles of sugar packets, then at Nick and Louis, and sets their plates down without a word. Louis laughs obnoxiously loud as she leaves and laughs even harder when he sees what Nick ordered for him.

“I'll let you have this one, Nick,” he says, turning the plate so the smiley face pancake is facing him. Nick has an omelette in front of him, one of the garden variety judging by the peppers. “Although I am a little disappointed you didn’t take advantage of the fifty five plus menu.”

“I can’t pass for fifty five,” Nick argues. Louis looks up from where he’s knocking the banana mouth off his plate to study Nick with an air of solemnity. He tilts his head from the right to the left and clicks his tongue.

“There are some very convincing wrinkles happening on that forehead of yours. ” Louis brings one foot up to boost himself on the seat, leaning closer to Nick. “Are those crow’s feet I see?”

“Shut up,” Nick says without heat, cutting into his food.

Louis smiles and drops down again. He eats the strawberry eyes off his pancake and then smears the whipped cream around before cutting into it, forgoing syrup altogether. Between bites, he notices Nick watching him with something akin to horror, but Louis could do the same to him. Vegetables have no place in a breakfast dish.

They eat without incident—unless Louis pouring six sugar packets into Nick’s coffee when he wasn’t looking counts as an incident—and true to his word Louis pays with Zayn’s credit card.

“Was that actually given to you?” Nick asks as Louis slides the card back in his pocket.

“Yes,” Louis says, fighting a frown. The only downside to being a thief: no one thinks he gets anything honestly. Nick should understand that; Nick also has a regular job while Louis does not, but that isn’t the point. “I don’t steal from friends.”

“Must be the only benefit of your friendship,” Nick says. A number of cutting responses flit through Louis’ mind, but he doesn’t use any of them.

“Must be,” is all he says, just kind of staring at Nick, trying to figure out if he knows he hit a nerve. He’s so tired all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know what to do with all these sugar packets now that they’re leaving. He deserts them on the table to trail after Nick.

“I guess I'm driving you home,” Nick says in the car. He looks at Louis like he’s waiting for Louis to hit him. Normally, that would be the case.

“Yeah, home,” Louis replies. He really wants to go to Zayn’s, play with all the animals that live in his house, but it’s a long way from where they are and he doesn’t want to spend more time with Nick. Not now, anyway, when he just feels like sleeping for eternity.

They don’t talk on the ride to Louis’. It’s uncomfortable, and Nick puts on some really annoying music that Louis can’t bring himself to complain about. Louis isn’t sure even stealing Nick’s phone from the cup holder between them would make him feel better, like he got a bit of revenge.

“Don’t forget to check your pockets,” Nick says when they park. Louis frowns at him.

“What?”

“There’s thieves around, one of them might have taken something.”

“Stop being weird,” Louis says, getting out of the car. “You couldn’t steal from me anyway.”

Nick just shrugs. Once Louis shuts the door, the car shoots back and out of the lot.

Louis is greeted in the apartment by the sound of Harry belting show tunes from the kitchen; his day must have gone well. He stops in to scare the hell out of him with a pinch to the side, followed by a tight hug, and then goes to change. As he steps out of his jeans, sugar spills _everywhere_.

For a minute all he can do is stare down at the mess. Then he grabs his phone and sends Nick a very strongly worded text about how put-pocketing is not the same, followed by another that just says _HOW_.

Nick sends back a single smiley face.

A second later Louis’ phone pings with another text, also from Nick. It says sorry. Louis locks and unlocks his phone twice before he throws it on his bed, puts on a pair of sweatpants, and goes back out to Harry, who is still singing show tunes. If his mood has improved because of the apology, it’s his own business.


End file.
